Music: The Dixie Dregs rise again

Wednesday

Mar 14, 2018 at 5:05 PM

By Chad Berndtson/For The Patriot Ledger

What prompted the mighty Dixie Dregs to regroup in their original lineup and tour for the first time in — gulp — 40 years?

“We’ve been talking about this through the years,” said drummer Rod Morgenstein, ahead of a reunion tour stop at Boston’s Wilbur Theatre this Monday, March 19. “I have conversations all the time about what a different and fun and interesting and cool band the Dixie Dregs was, and is. In the last couple of years, the possibilities of something like this happening became a bit more of a reality, and in January of last year we got together and tried out a handful of songs. The reconnecting was so nice and this has turned into something terrific.”

The band began as “Dixie Grit” in 1970 and became the Dixie Dregs a few years later — a landmark jazz/rock/fusion ensemble that quickly developed — and has maintained over decades — a cult following. Morgenstein and guitar legend Steve Morse have been part of more or less every touring lineup since, but 2018’s reunion tour also features bassist Andy West, violinist Allen Sloan and keyboardist Steve Davidowski, as well as, notes Morgenstein, some of the band’s original road crew.

Morgenstein, Morse, West and Sloan go all the way back to the beginning of the group; Davidowski came aboard soon after its members graduated from the prestigious University of Miami School of Music.

“Some of its hadn’t seen Steve Davidowski in decades, but really everybody’s been off in their other worlds. Alan is a medical doctor and runs his own practice, and Andy West has been in the IT business for 30 years,” Morgenstein said. “And now for the first time in 40 years the five of us have been up there and staring at each other again. There’s a lot of smiling going on.”

The Dixie Dregs music is plenty dense and intense, but perhaps unlike other bands lumped into the “fusion” or “prog” categories, their largely instrumental tunes favor grab-able melodies.

“The music is very esoteric and still is but we didn’t want it to be self-indulgent,” Morgenstein said. “I wouldn’t call it easy listening but you can be a casual listener who doesn’t want to be in there tearing things apart, or you can be an experienced musician who loves the more challenging parts of the music. There’s always little things within it that will change from performance to performance and there’s a lot of freedom in the music but we’re true to the parts.”

Morgenstein has taught at the Berklee College of Music for about 20 years and commutes often up to Boston, staying with Dregs manager Frank Solomon when he’s in town. He also stays busy with Winger, the hard rock/metal crew that came up in the era of hair bands, and other pursuits such as The Jelly Jam and Jazz Is Dead, which puts a fusion spin on the music of the Grateful Dead and has been through several incarnations.

For the Dixie Dregs, he notes, the band hasn’t yet talked about future tours or even future new music but the door certainly isn’t closed.

“As you get older, you start pondering what are the important things,” said Morgenstein, a ripe 64. “I can tell looking at all of us that maybe this is the meaning — trying to find nice moments with people whom you care about. As far as new music, we’ve not had that conversation but we will see where we stand at the end of this tour.”